Creeeeepyyyy
The companies that manufacture printers, such as HP, embed technology that prints coded messages in tiny, nigh-invisible dots on EVERY PRINTED PAGE your printer produces.
The dots encode information about the printer's serial number and a date/time stamp for when the page was printed.
Bear in mind that with a serial number from a printer, plenty can be determined about the printer itself - when and where it was made, and very possibly how / where it was distributed. (Think of VIN numbers. The numbers themselves store a ton of data.) And, if you purchased a printer directly from an electronics store, sleep peacefully knowing that BestBuy associated customer identification data from their own database to the model of printer you bought. It may even be that the barcode scanner read the printer's serial number from its packaging - allowing them to tie a very specific printer to you exactly. Pure speculation, but I can visualize all the technological moments that would make this transaction possible; the steps are easy.
Basically this means that moder printers are, at the very least, like guns. When a gun fires a bullet, the bullet's casing is etched with a pattern unique to the inside of the barrel of that gun. This helps crime labs definitely associate discovered weapons to bullets fired at a crime scene. Now, any page your printer outputs associates to your printer - that's a fact. But how far back can that data be tied? It all depends on how compliant BestBuy is with an investigator, regardless of that investigator's intentions.
Orwellian? Outlandish? Yes - and true!
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/10/23/howto-read-the-secre.html
The dots encode information about the printer's serial number and a date/time stamp for when the page was printed.
Bear in mind that with a serial number from a printer, plenty can be determined about the printer itself - when and where it was made, and very possibly how / where it was distributed. (Think of VIN numbers. The numbers themselves store a ton of data.) And, if you purchased a printer directly from an electronics store, sleep peacefully knowing that BestBuy associated customer identification data from their own database to the model of printer you bought. It may even be that the barcode scanner read the printer's serial number from its packaging - allowing them to tie a very specific printer to you exactly. Pure speculation, but I can visualize all the technological moments that would make this transaction possible; the steps are easy.
Basically this means that moder printers are, at the very least, like guns. When a gun fires a bullet, the bullet's casing is etched with a pattern unique to the inside of the barrel of that gun. This helps crime labs definitely associate discovered weapons to bullets fired at a crime scene. Now, any page your printer outputs associates to your printer - that's a fact. But how far back can that data be tied? It all depends on how compliant BestBuy is with an investigator, regardless of that investigator's intentions.
Orwellian? Outlandish? Yes - and true!
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/10/23/howto-read-the-secre.html